Oakville firefighters participate in the World Rescue Organization's Extrication Challenge in La Rochelle, France. The firefighters ranked sixth in the world. - Oakville Fire Department photo
Residents involved in a car crash who find themselves trapped can now be soothed with the knowledge that one of the best extrication teams in the world will be coming to their rescue.
The Oakville fire department’s extrication team has ranked sixth at The World Rescue Organisation’s Extrication Challenge, which was held recently in La Rochelle, France.
The international event saw the Oakville firefighters square off against 35 other teams from five continents, in scenarios that ranged from extracting a single victim from a wrecked vehicle, to more complex situations involving more than one trapped victim and multiple vehicles.
“When we got our results, we were pretty ecstatic about where we were at,” said Chad Roberts of the Oakville extrication team.
“We finished sixth overall. It was our first time competing at this level, so I was just shocked we made the top 10. We were just blown away.”
Roberts said the team’s medic was ranked third in the world, their incident commander was ranked eighth overall and the team’s tool work was ranked 12th overall.
The Oakville firefighter said his team of six faced three challenging tests.
The first was a basic scenario where the team had 20 minutes to get the trapped victim out of the wrecked vehicle as efficiently and safely as possible.
The second challenge called on the firefighters to accomplish the same task, but in 10 minutes.
The final challenge gave the team 30 minutes to rescue two trapped victims.
The positioning of the vehicles offers additional challenges.
In some cases, the vehicles were upside down, and in another case, one vehicle was on top of another.
The team’s performance was closely watched during each scenario and scored on several criteria, including the group’s use of extraction tools (e.g. Jaws of Life), patient care and overall command and control of the scene.
Roberts said participating in this type of event and seeing how other firefighters from around the world operate is valuable because it helps Oakville firefighters bring their life-saving skills to a whole new level.
“We’ll learn all these new things from people from all over the world, and we’ll come back and spread that to other people,” said Roberts.
He said it also creates a strong sense of camaraderie among the team members.
The World Rescue Organisation is a not-for-profit group and registered charity that was created to assist in the dissemination of emergency rescue and medical techniques, practices and procedures to aid the effective management of road traffic collisions and the care of those involved.
Link to original article on insidehalton.com: 'We were pretty ecstatic': Oakville firefighters ranked 6th in world at extrication event